Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 73 of 88

ON-CAMPUS HOUSING
StudentHousingBusiness.com January/February 2018
73
campuslivingvillages.com
redefining the student experience
From award-winning residence life programs to exclusive global student travel
opportunities, we are constantly creating new ways to reinvent the student experience.
DEVELOPMENT
MANAGEMENT
PARTNERSHIP
own private study time. There-
fore, we have observed a focus on
a broad array of academic features
such as private study space and
collaborative pods rather than
many of the luxury amenities we
have seen."
"On-campus housing has really
changed and has become a much
larger tie to the university's over-
all mission," says Turner of Brails-
ford & Dunlavey. "The majority of
residence halls that we're work-
ing on on-campus have a learning
component, and they're called liv-
ing-learning centers. These devel-
opments include a lot more group
study rooms, seminar rooms,
common kitchens and lounges."
Turner also notes that units are
being scaled down in terms of
size.
"In the past, it was about ame-
nitizing the project with large, sin-
gle rooms and a bed-to-bath ratio
of one-to-one, where we're now
trying to encourage more com-
munity via smaller units to get
students outside of their rooms,"
he says. "We've also been seeing
a lot more of affinity housing. It's
a shared, common theme in the
residence hall like honors hous-
ing, or an engineering house for
all majors in that field. It gets
students with a common interest
together. We're seeing that grow
as a trend."
Alma Sealine, director of uni-
versity housing at the Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-
paign, notes that scaled down
units are also more cost- and
spatially-efficient.
"For on-campus housing, there
has been a trend towards mov-
ing to all apartments because that
is what students want and being
very customer service oriented
and providing what students
want to make us attractive for
students choosing an institution,"
she says. "For many campuses,
that is not feasible because their
current inventory does not allow
for apartment-style living, so find-
ing ways to make that residential
experience an attractive experi-
ence without necessarily having
apartments is a challenge. I think
that another trend is finding ways
for there to be connection to the
academic experience, so I think
there will be a continued increase
Texas A&M University — with development partners Benchmark Global
Hospitality and Stonehenge Development — is currently developing a hotel
and conference center, which will offer 250 guest suites, a multi-level
sports bar, 35,000 square feet of meeting and event space, a coffee bar
and a wine bar.
ALMA SEALINE
Director of University
Housing,
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign